Thursday, March 1, 2007

Ejournal 8 October 2006 more lessons

I am learning and observing lots of new things. I want to share some of these things with you, so that when you come to serve in Ukraine, you will be prepared.

Ice Cream comes in a bag. I don’t know why it doesn’t come in a bag at home. It is easier to remove the ice cream from a bag than a carton and the empty bag takes up less room in the trash can.

Milk in the store is sometimes sold in a bag. Now, this doesn’t make much sense to me. I just don’t know what to do with a bag of milk. We buy the milk in boxes from the store or the fresh from the cow variety from the market or the from milk man that drives by our house.

It is possible to pasteurize your own milk. Isn’t that very cool? Silly me, I didn’t know that you could purchase milk that has not been pasteurized, but here it is an option. When they say fresh from the cow, they mean fresh from the cow.

Don’t buy fish that smells like fish. This is a helpful tip, but I don’t really understand it. What should fish smell like if not fish? I guess it is a good thing I don’t like fish.

Always taste the cheese before you buy it. And the fruit. And the prepared meat. And the nuts. And the salad. And the herbs. Not only does this insure you are getting the freshest product available, it also provides a lovely lunch while you are shopping.

It is okay to double park as long as traffic can still get by. The city planners in Berdyansk did not plan for people to have cars. Sure, maybe a few people, but not very many. More and more people now have cars, and often there is just not enough parking. You see cars parked all over and you just wait for the driver to come back or go around. Ukrainians really are very patient.

Milk fat is very interesting. It makes a huge difference in sour cream and milk and yogurt and cheese. I never really noticed before because I don’t believe I ever had so many options. Milk comes in about 6 different milk fat levels from 3.5% to 0.5%, sour cream, at least 3 levels from 10% to 20%, yogurt, at least 5 from 0.7% to 3.5%, cheese, I don’t even want to think about.

English and the Cyrillic Alphabet can be used on the same sign or paper or label or anything. I think it is just to confuse me. The other day I saw a sign with the letter “R” and I thought what is that letter, totally not realizing the sign was written in English until I had already passed it.

At the market, I can purchase half a pig head. Why would I want to? I don’t know, but isn’t it good to know that it is available.

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